Wants Archives -

AT&T Inc. wants to show political tampering as it seeks evidence about whether President Trump influenced the Justice Department’s decision to sue to block the company’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Inc.

AT&T wants communications between the Justice Department and the White House about the…

J.B. Smoove’s just discovered what millions of people already know — “This is Us” is great television … and he can’t stop watching it. We got the comedian and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star at LAX Saturday and asked him a question he couldn’t…

This week Colorado House Representative Jared Polis sent a letter to the U.S. House Committee on Ethics asking the organization to propose statutes that require government employees to declare their bitcoin and digital currency holdings.

U.S. bureaucrats are ramping up efforts to try and regulate the decentralized currency bitcoin and the slew of other cryptocurrencies that exist. On February 5, the House Representative Jared Polis who is known as “bitcoin-friendly,” submitted a request that urges the House Committee on Ethics (HCE) to provide guidance on how politicians can disclose their digital asset holdings. Polis states that in a lot of U.S. territories digital assets are defined as securities or commodities, and U.S. politicians are already required to declare traditional assets. Polis says it is “critical” that the HCE provide this type of guidance to government employees.

“Members of Congress and covered employees are already required to report certain asset holdings over certain amounts, including reporting any commodities holding over $ 1,000,” Polis argues in his petition to the HCE.

A Member or covered employee should report any virtual currency holding as they would report any other commodity, such as gold.

The letter to the House Committee on Ethics from Jared Polis urges the group to create guidelines for politicians to disclose their cryptocurrency holdings.

Financial Disclosures Are Critical to Maintaining Public Trust

Jared Polis is said to be a ‘bitcoin-friendly’ U.S. politician. Polis accepted BTC for election donations back in 2014, and the House representative has stated in the past, “I will protect bitcoin in U.S. congress.”

Polis says that it is clear existing statutes that require asset disclosure can easily cover virtual currencies. The Coloradan representative also remarks that the ethics committee should look towards the guidelines already drafted by government agencies such as the IRS, SEC, and CFTC. In addition to commodities like gold, the U.S. Stock Act requires politicians to disclose real-time purchases and sales of stocks acquired. Anything that exceeds over $ 1,000 whether it be a stock or a commodity must be declared to the public, and Polis says cryptocurrencies are no different. Polis writes in his HCE petition:

Financial disclosures are critical to maintaining public trust in elected officials and the integrity of congress — I look forward to working with the committee on this issue.

The House representative concludes that the increasing use of cryptocurrency as an alternative to traditional payments and investments necessitates congress to take the appropriate actions. Polis believes a set of virtual currency disclosure guidelines will help “maintain transparency and deter potential conflicts of interest.”

What do you think about politicians being required to disclose their bitcoin and digital asset holdings? Let us know what you think about this story in the comments below.

A Massachusetts couple says it was fun at first when they started receiving free mystery packages from Amazon that they hadn’t ordered, the AP reports. Now they think it’s annoying and want it to stop. Mike and Kelly Gallivan tell the Boston Globe the first package arrived in October. They…Newser

Text messages between two FBI agents caught up in the Robert Mueller story are once again making headlines. Both Fox News and the AP have reviewed additional texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Here’s how they’re being played: Obama: Fox’s story emphasizes an exchange between the pair in September…Newser

Watch out Canada! New York wants a piece of the bitcoin mining market, securing for its residents revenues and jobs that come along with the electricity intensive process. Bitcoin mining might even help revive local economies that once relied on polluting industries.

Mining Up North

St. Lawrence River, Massena, New York

The New York Power Authority has approved the allocation of 15,000 kilowatts of hydroelectric power to a new bitcoin mining venture by Coinmint, the North Country Data Center Corp (NCDC), pending the approval of a contract within a year. Coinmint, which currently operates a bitcoin mining facility in Plattsburgh, expects that the cryptocurrency market will continue to grow worldwide and thus seeks to expand its business toa second facility.

According to the proposal plan, the power allocation would support capital investment of at least $ 165 million and the creation of 150 new jobs in connection with the proposed project. The planwill involve renovating a former metal smelting facility in Massena, and the installation and operation of up to 180,000 specialized bitcoin mining systems within two years. Once complete and fully operational, the NCDC expects to handle 15 percent of the global cryptocurrency business.

Cheap Reliable Power

According to a local TV news report, the main reason for the bitcoin mining business to come to the area is that it can offer cheap and reliable electricity. The New York Power Authority works to leverage the value of hydropower to improve the local economy, and among the factors it considers when evaluating a request is the number of jobs created as a result of the allocation.

The new bitcoin mining facility is planned to operate around the clock, and NCDC indicates it would hire 75 full-time employees in 2018 and 75 in 2019 for a total minimum employment force of 150 employees. The jobs would include security personnel, IT technicians, electricians, installers and operational staff, with an average wage of $ 46,000.

The proposed location for the new mining complex is just south of Canada, whose cold climate and cheap hydroelectric power are a major attraction for Chinese bitcoin miners.

What locations are best suited to win the race to become new bitcoin mining hubs? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Do you like to research and read about Bitcoin technology? Check out Bitcoin.com’s Wiki page for an in-depth look at Bitcoin’s innovative technology and interesting history.

He went in search of gold and jewels and, like others that came before him, died in pursuit. Authorities have confirmed 31-year-old Coloradan Eric Ashby is at least the third person to die in search of Forrest Fenn’s $ 2 million treasure , which the art collector claims is hidden somewhere in…Newser

Despite the warnings of the Israeli regulator that it won’t tolerate bitcoin to get somehow backdoor listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, public companies keep pivoting into the field. The latest example is a firm that focused on oil refineries until now. All of a sudden it announced plans to sell bitcoin ATMs to casinos in Turkish occupied Northern Cyprus, and possibly Nigeria.

Bitcoin Is the New Oil

Chiron Refineries LTD (TASE:CHR), a company which focuses on developing oil refineries in Africa, has announced to investors on Tuesday morning that it is entering the cryptocurrency market and its stock price quickly jumped up close to 60%. After an apparent prodding by the regulator the company issued a second announcement at the end of the trading day with extra information about the move.

Chiron, which only on Sunday reported an agreement to build a new oil refinery in Nigeria, has now decided to diversify its business into the “cryptocurrency accessibility” sector. The company signed an agreement with Crypto Technologies Ltd to set up a subsidiary in Northern Cyprus (the Turkish occupied part of the island), to be the sole distributor of its produces in the territory as well as Turkey itself. It also acquired an option to expand the distribution business to Nigeria within 12 months of the agreement.

Every Casino Needs a Bitcoin ATM

Cratos Premium Hotel and Casino, Northern Cyprus, Kirenya (Girne)

Crypto Technologies Ltd is said to develop “a unique technology for the fast and secure selling and buying of cryptocurrency for end users, insured by an American insurance company.” Reading through the extended description it seems that the main product is an app which turns mobile tablets into bitcoin ATMs. It will supposedly be ready for distribution by the coming April.

Trying to assuage the regulator’s fears, Chiron added that the UI and the trading algorithm via APIs have already been developed, that it is unaware of any legal bans on cryptocurrencies in the intended regions and that it will not hold or mine bitcoin by itself. Additionally, the company explained that the potential clients for the products are not individuals but businesses, like casinos. Asked by Israeli media what connection the oil company has to any of this, Chiron’s lawyer explained that one of the owners has connections in Northern Cyprus and experience in the casino business.

Should all public companies be allowed to pivot into the bitcoin ecosystem? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Do you like to research and read about Bitcoin technology? Check out Bitcoin.com’s Wiki page for an in-depth look at Bitcoin’s innovative technology and interesting history.

The fall of Bitconnect was as certain as night follows day. A pyramid scheme wrapped inside a Ponzi with a side order of WTF, Bitconnect was as crazy as it was calamitous. The only miracle was that the racket lasted so long. When the ringleaders shut up shop on Wednesday, causing the token to plummet from $ 290 to $ 8, that ought to have been the end of the matter. Remarkably though, BCC continues to be actively traded, and has even recovered some of its value. The reason for the mini revival? Bitconnect is launching an ICO.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

It was no secret, prior to its collapse, that Bitconnect was running an ICO. Its Bitconnect X website has been accepting contributions since January 10. When Bitconnect closed its doors a week later, after its original website had been offline for days, it was assumed that Bitconnect X would follow suit. After all, no one would be gullible enough to get fooled twice, surely. Apparently so. Not only is the Bitconnect ICO going ahead as planned, but investors are actively throwing money at it.

When Bitconnect announced that it was closing its lending platform on Wednesday, $ 1.5 billion worth of value was wiped off its market cap in less than two hours. Those losses weren’t borne by the company though – it was ordinary investors who were left out of pocket. Bitconnect’s execs were doing just fine, sitting on the stash of bitcoin they’d pocketed from investors in the months prior. But then, as Twitter traders eagerly watched to see the first altcoin drop to zero in real time, something strange happened. BCC stopped falling and started to climb.

The Ponzi Scheme That Just Won’t Die

On January 17, BCC was the worst performing cryptocurrency on Coinmarketcap. Incredibly, 24 hours later, it was the best performing coin on the site, up 410% in 24 hours to reach $ 43 a token. This revival will have been of little consolation to investors, who were still heavily in the red. Nevertheless, it showed that against all reason, people were still buying the coin. In the past 24 hours, $ 18 million of BCC has been traded and a coin that was written off as being utterly worthless is now changing hands for $ 28.

On Thursday, BCC rose from $ 8 to a high of $ 43.

The reason for this is BCC can be used to purchase BCCX, the new Bitconnect token that’s being launched via an ICO. Each BCCX is priced at $ 50. To reiterate then: Bitconnect duped thousands of investors, selling them BCC coins at up to $ 290 apiece. It then crashed the market, and is now encouraging the same investors to exchange their BCC for BCCX at a ratio of 2:1 in an event that ought to be dubbed The Halvening.

Lambs to the Slaughter

By late 2017, it was apparent to Bitconnect that the Ponzi scheme they had constructed was on the verge of toppling. Not content with riding off into the sunset with their ill-gotten gains, they decided to have another bite of the cherry. The Bitconnectx.co domain was registered on the penultimate day of 2017, and the crowdsale commenced less than two weeks later. The company is seeking to sell 11.76 million BCCX, which will earn it $ 588 million. It will also retain another $ 145 million in coins, bringing its total assets to $ 733 million.

The new-look Bitconnect X platform, for the record, “allows you to earn interest for helping maintain security on the network by holding BCCX in a Qt Desktop wallet that is attached to the network and allowing transactions to flow through it”. Which sounds suspiciously like Bitconnect mk I.

One of the first tasks on the Bitconnect X roadmap is to attain a listing on Coinmarketcap, which shouldn’t be a problem, as the site had no qualms about heavily promoting the previous scam. After that it will spend the summer performing vague tasks such as “adding more security layers in Exchange platform”, presumably while Bitconnect execs put as much distance between themselves and their creditors as possible.

Bitconnect Keeps Playing While the Titanic Sinks

In the days after the collapse of Bitconnect, the company’s social media account continued glibly tweeting bitcoin news, as if nothing had happened. Each new story it posted was met with hundreds of thunderous replies, until the account finally broke its silence to audaciously issue the following claim:

Before cryptocurrency was invented, gullible individuals were defrauded via Nigerian bank scams. After the mark had lost almost everything, and the princes’ fortune they’d been promised had failed to materialize, the scammer would go in for one last trick. They’d “come clean” with the victim and confess that they too had been duped. For a small fee, they could get the mark’s money back, and set everything right.

Amazingly, many victims, out of desperation, would take them up on this offer. The majority of Bitconnect X’s investors will be the same souls who lost thousands in Bitconnect. Despite all the warning signs, they’re willing to go for broke and pray that this time they can get out before the pyramid collapses. In the words of Winston Churchill, never was so much owed by so many to so few.

How long do you think Bitconnect X will last? Let us know in the comments section below.

Daily Business News

We would like to welcome you to DailyBusinessNews.com a place where you can get all the top headline news every day 24/7. We are committed to bring you all the breaking news as it happens hour by hour. Our staff is dedicated and have high standards in reporting all aspects of the news from around the world.